


Squint

by Doreen



Category: Uglies Series - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Character Study, Gen, facial dysmorphia, slight Tally/David but mostly just Tally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 20:03:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7588177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doreen/pseuds/Doreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Face it, Tally-wa, you're Special...</em>
</p><p>Tally Youngblood – Smokey, Crim, revolutionary, fire-starter – has a small identity crisis in a forest glade. It's quaint, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Squint

Months after leaving civilization behind, the trigger chemical Tally had been taking daily was eating away at her sharp Special features day by day. She still had the teeth, of course. She could rewire her mind and take the pills to reshape her softening face, but some things – tattoos, scars, bones, teeth - were now permanent. Some nights she managed to slice her lip open in her sleep as her brain adjusted to her face's new-old-new configuration, her muscles' shifting positions amidst whatever other cells floated around beneath her ever-thinning skin. She even got blemishes now and then. 

When they'd left the city, she and David had coaxed the hole in the wall into spitting out a variety of items they knew they could never replicate themselves, and then stolen some more for good measure: medicine, nanos, the chemical used to soften pretty bones. Amongst their lot, a small mirror, which was good for surveillance, and for starting fires. She sat back against a tree at the edge of the glade and watched the small pile of branches begin to crumple under their own combustion. She could fire-start just as well as David now, make it big enough to cook an entire half-dozen rabbits. She stroked the smooth surface of the mirror idly in her palm. 

Above everything, the mirror was also good for looking at herself. 

Tally really thought she would've gotten enough of that for a lifetime, from staring at her own ugly flaws, then her new pretty perfection, then her special angularity. Maybe it was an instinct, to look at oneself given the opportunity. 

She held the small pane up to examine her face, for the second time that week. Or was it month? It was hard to keep track now. The face in the mirror wasn't quite the one she'd grown used to seeing during her months as a Special, but it was all familiar. When she smiled openly, her sharpened teeth still loomed out, but closed-mouthed, her dimples had begun to reveal themselves. Her hair had grown out dirt-brown again, hanging loosely over her forehead. The flaps of her eyelids had begun to droop, emphasizing the close set of her eyes, her pointy brows. She still looked mostly Special, but in this late afternoon light, with only her gaze visible in the mirror, she almost could be Squint. If she narrowed her eyes enough in the blazing sun, in front of the crackling fire, she could be ugly again. She blinked hard and imagined her irises rust-colored again instead of a predatory charcoal. 

When she opened her eyes again, all she saw was Special. Her nose was slightly more rounded, her cheekbones were blunted, but to any average new pretty, she still would have been rightly terrifying. She felt a certain sting behind her nose. No tear ducts, no tears, but she let out a breath that could've been a sob, if anyone had been listening. She set the mirror down on the ground and stared up at the amber sky; rested the crown of her head against the tree and pressed hard enough for the bark to make a painful indent into her scalp, but never enough to mar her indestructible ceramic skull. She picked up a stone off the ground nearby and crushed it in her Special fist.

For so many hours a day when she was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen she had marveled at her own ugliness in the mirror in her dorm, made morphs that were more of a taunt of her ugly state than hopefulness for her pretty future. Yet, Shay had befriended her, a stranger with that squinting, pudgy face that was now etched under Tally's eyelids. David had loved that face. It was Tally Youngblood, but now it was not. 

In its less-developed form, Sol and Ellie had taken turns wiping snot and tears and mudsmears from that unpretty, unadulterated face. Tally remembered Az and David side by side, the same nose, same smiles. One of Tally's parents must have had her close-set eyes at some point. Maybe Ellie. She was always having to drop nanos into her eyes to correct and re-correct her vision. Or maybe it was Sol – his brows furrowed a millimeter closer than most middle pretties Tally had seen.

Tally wondered if her parents had ever looked at her as a littlie and been reminded of themselves as uglies, and whether they had secretly felt disdain, or if the resemblance made Sol or Ellie want to cherish her all the more. 

But then again, the lesions probably prevented that sort of contemplation. Tally remembered the final 'I love you' Maddy had asked her to relay to David. There was a sinking in her chest as Tally realized that her parents, though kind and gentle, were probably not capable of the same fierce, ardent love that Maddy had for her son - that Tally, even now, did not miss Sol and Ellie in the same way she knew David missed Maddy and mourned Az. Did David watch Az and Maddy transform from pretty to ugly when he was a littlie, taking the same trigger chemical Tally was taking now? 

The big changes had always seemed to affect David more than they did her. It made sense, in a certain way. David saw her face more often than she did, especially now with limited reflective surfaces. He'd barely recognized her when she turned pretty. He couldn't help but flinch in fright when he first seen her as Special. Even now, out of the corner of her eye, when they were hunting or when they lay together in the dark, she'd catch him staring at her, searching for traces of what she had been. Tally watched him with the same sort of questioning, not because his face had changed, but worried that deep down, he would never be able to quash the base instinct that told him not to let his guard down when greeted by her cruel lupine features. She had long since ceased seeing him as ugly, but with a face as deliberately constructed as hers, she wondered if he would always see her as Special. 

She could only hope that once the trigger chemical had run its course, they could finally just be David and Tally. 

A soft snap of branches behind her jostled her back to the present. With her amplified hearing, she could sense David approaching, his pace steady but encumbered. Must've gotten plenty of rabbits. She picked up the mirror, giving herself one last glimpse, before placing it back safely in the bag where it belonged.

**Author's Note:**

> At some points in the books, Tally seems pretty nonchalant about her metamorphasis from ugly to pretty to special. Like if I recall correctly, the whole trilogy covers the span of 18 months or something. I figured her emotions have to catch up with her rapid transformation sometime... 
> 
> Also - still don't 100% understand nanos, haven't read _Extras_ , and handmirrors probably can't make huge roasting bonfires. But I hope you enjoyed it anyhow. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
